Think Spirit

Explaining spirit for the down to earth

I’ve written about my narcissistic mother before and how difficult she could be. My mother died on January 8 this year from lung cancer. She could have treated it but refused, insisting that the “Lord” would heal her. That was her choice of course, but it was a choice that created a lot of tension …

Last month I wrote about the eye of the hurricane. Since then I’ve found out that even my dog has cancer, apparently a very aggressive form of osteosarcoma. We elected to remove the tumor, which meant taking out 60% of his collarbone. My canine athlete, running partner and studly ski jor partner is now limping around …

Dr. Raymond Moody is perhaps the world’s leading authoring on near death experience. I’ve found his work very comforting as I support my mother, who is in hospice. Although his more recent videos, including those with Dr. Eben Alexander, are excellent I still find this original video “Life After Life” to be one of his best. …

I’ve written about my narcissistic mother before and how difficult she could be.

My mother died on January 8 this year from lung cancer. She could have treated it but refused, insisting that the “Lord” would heal her. That was her choice of course, but it was a choice that created a lot of tension and caretaking on my part.

It’s an interesting thing to take care of someone who feels no gratitude for your efforts and, as I found out later when my sister discovered my mother’s journals, considers you the enemy. Not only was my mother narcissistic it turns out she also had a strong persecutory delusional disorder and believed pretty much anyone that tried to help her, was out to get her.

Although I got frustrated at times, the strange thing was I did not and do not resent my mother. She was mentally ill and therefore tortured both emotionally and physically, especially in the last six months. Mental illness runs in my family and she was also terribly abused as a child. I can only imagine how awful it must have been to be inside her mind all those years and I hope she is happy on the other side and resting from this terrible lifetime.

Last month I wrote about the eye of the hurricane. Since then I’ve found out that even my dog has cancer, apparently a very aggressive form of osteosarcoma. We elected to remove the tumor, which meant taking out 60% of his collarbone. My canine athlete, running partner and studly ski jor partner is now limping around the house with a 14-inch scar running across his shoulder. My heart breaks for him but I know he has more living to do. I’ll have to run without him, which sucks. Also, my stubborn mother who refused to leave her house to move into assisted living fell and broke her hip and her hand. She’s now recovering in a nursing home, the very place she was trying to stay out of.

And that leads me to my latest revelation in this year of challenges. There have been many lessons in 2014 but probably the biggest one is that most of my suffering has come from trying to avoid discomfort. I’ve tried to avoid the grief of losing my dear mother-in-law. I’ve tried to be in denial of my mother’s illness and her lack of love for me. I refused to call my breast cancer “cancer” and downplayed it so much that several people didn’t even realize I had radiation. So many emotions I’ve tried to escape, at the same time projecting the worst that could happen and giving myself the worst anxiety I’ve ever had (and that’s saying something) topped off with a case of hives.

Last week I got a message from one of my guides. “Run toward it,” he said. “Run toward it with joy and wild abandonment. It’s part of a perfect plan.”

If that wasn’t a “DUH” moment I don’t know what is. I have been able to find peace inside of all of this chaos but I’m still hiding in there. What I need to do is jump into it, let it throw me around like a towel in a washing machine and see what happens. I need to stay in the moment and experience every single dirty, painful, “why me” moment of this lifetime. Because there are more miracles ahead of me.

“We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.” -Kenji Miyazawa

Dr. Raymond Moody is perhaps the world’s leading authoring on near death experience. I’ve found his work very comforting as I support my mother, who is in hospice. Although his more recent videos, including those with Dr. Eben Alexander, are excellent I still find this original video “Life After Life” to be one of his best. Real, credible people explain their experiences with Dr. Moody providing his analysis and data between the stories. And the ’80’s hairstyles and clothing are kind of fun too. I hope you gain as much from it as I have. More information on Dr. Moody and his work can be found at the Raymond Moody Institute site.

This is not a post to complain about the challenges in my life. The intention of this post is to help you understand how the universe and and the laws of nature have taught me that peace, not happiness, is the true aim. Everyday I envision myself as the eye of the hurricane. You should try it too.

In order to understand this exercise know that the eye of the hurricane is calm because the strong winds directed toward the center never actually reach it. Instead, a force of nature called “coriolis” deflects those winds creating a rotation around the exact center, or eye, where all is calm. This rotating force is caused in essence by the rotation of Earth itself.

Brief science lesson over…back to the circumstances in my life. A little over three years ago my sister, with whom I have the only close relationship in my family of origin, was diagnosed with Stage 3 colon cancer. She is thankfully in remission now but I was terrified as she has been my only real “parent” figure since my father died when I was 19. Next began a series of events that led to my husband and I nearly divorcing and my business coming close to bankruptcy. My marriage and my professional life both stood on the brink of failure for more than a year. At one point I was so stressed I went to the gym, took off my sweats to run on the treadmill and didn’t realize I had forgotten to wear my running shorts underneath. I almost made it to the treadmill before I realized I was in my underwear, much to the consternation of a couple young gym rats.

Gladly, my husband and I eventually repaired our issues and my business also began to mend. As I began to finally breathe a sigh of relief, however, one of my closest friends was in a car accident and paralyzed, making her a quadriplegic. Her family is quite dysfunctional so another friend and I became her main support through her rehabilitation over the next year. One year after that accident, again as I began my sigh of relief, my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. 2013 was spent trying to coax her to treat the cancer, to no avail, while still being a main support to my friend.

in January of this year my husband’s mother passed away after a devastating and cruel illness. In early May of this year we learned my own mother’ cancer had metastasized to her bones and she was diagnosed terminal. To top things off three weeks later I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I finished a course of radiation and surgery six weeks ago. Oh, and I should probably also mention that my niece has been battling anorexia for the past couple of years.

I’m a pretty resilient person and endured a couple of severe traumas before I turned twenty. However the breast cancer seemed to be the last straw that broke this camel’s back. I was in full fear mode, not only worried about my own health but devastated that I would lose part of the time I had left with my mom. During the awful wait for my surgery results I had some of the worst panic attacks of my life.

Today I was thinking about how great my life feels when I let go of every expectation. And I mean EVERY expectation, of my husband, my job, my family and friends, anything. This is something that I have known for a long time but this morning I was thinking about whether or not I had really learned it.

To me, the difference between knowing and learning is this: When I know something it’s familiar to me. I read it in a book and think “yes that’s right.” When I’ve learned something it’s integrated into my life and daily behavior. This learning can be good or bad. From my mother, I learned that love is conditional on how much I do for the person who loves me. I learned early on from my family that it is best not to trust anyone and that being vulnerable was the same thing as being exposed to attack. These are things that I’ve been trying to replace with new learning for most of my life.

Here is my inventory of questions for creating a year full of beautiful moments in 2014, based on the difference between knowing and learning:

What can I be grateful that I’ve learned that is healthy and positive for me?

What has that learning replaced?

What have I learned that I would like to replace with new learning?

What do I know that I would like to truly learn instead of just knowing?

Truly learning to have no expectations is one of my answers to the last question. I was deeply disappointed by someone’s behavior recently. Was this because I had developed certain expectations of this person? Or because I have expectations that if I allow someone into my inner circle (i.e. moving from co-worker or acquaintance to friend) I have expectations of how they’ll behave?

Fortunately I was able to recognize this disparity between my expectations and reality quickly, and could remove the suffering that went along with the experience. It still hurts and disappoints but I am not suffering because of it. I guess this lesson and this experience, which was the furthest thing from what I wanted, was what I really needed to start my new year off right.

What I find terribly interesting is how the expectations of the season exaggerate others’ personalities. Some people find their generosity expand as they experience gratitude and a desire to extend that goodwill to others. Some people feel a terrible magnification of their loneliness, isolation and/or addiction. (I know this was true of me when I was in my full-blown chemical dependency and alcoholism.)

For some people the holidays remind them that their life is not fulfilling and that they are not happy. And a subset of those people seek to find others with a bright light. Instead of warming themselves in that light they attempt to stamp it out. I’ve found that like other personality traits this one is magnified during the holidays as well.

Last night I received a rather disturbing note from a client. She buried some admonishment into a rather muddled long email and then after that wished me a happy holiday. This woman is a lonely, overweight, aging woman who buries herself in her work and lives vicariously through her glamorous CEO boss. (This sounds mean and judgmental I know, but it’s what my guides are telling me about her. ) I do like her but it’s obvious she is threatened by me. At first I was highly bothered by the email but what I’ve learned is that these people are sad and need prayer more than anything.

if you have a bright light you may have experienced others coming after you, perhaps in a corporate setting, to try to undermine your credibility or impact your success. They seem to know the buttons that expose your vulnerability and can be a source of great stress and angst. And they heighten their activity at times like the holidays, or perhaps when you may be receiving special recognition for something you’ve done. Keep in mind this person might be a family member or friend as well. Those of us with narcissistic mothers are even more apt to take these people to heart , for it feels like the familiar to how our mothers always tried to steal the limelight.

I have had others trying to stamp out my light most of my life. If someone is doing this to you here are a few things that really help me move through the situation gracefully: Read the rest of this entry »

I thought I was getting more into the habit of writing but this month has thrown me for yet another loop (or set of loops). My mother, with whom I’ve had a complicated relationship as you know if you’ve been reading this blog, has decided not to do anything about the tumor growing in her lung. Granted, she’s 78 however she’s been repeatedly assured by doctors that it’s Stage 1 and highly curable if she would only have the surgery.

I understand her decision and again, I don’t understand it. But what I’m coming to realize is that while I want my mother to have the best care, and hopefully not die a horrible death, it’s her decision. And so I’m leaving it all up to my Higher Power. She could live another ten or even 20 years. Or she could fail quickly. Or anything in between. I don’t know what will happen.

Yesterday when she told me this I was very upset. One of the benefits of having OCD is that organizing and cleaning for me are very soothing activities. I got to work on folding clothes neatly, moving them around in my closet, and vacuuming spider webs. All the while feeling very blue. As I walked by my spare bedroom, I saw a hangar fly out of the closet and land on the floor. This didn’t scare me as I knew it was a spirit reminding me that there was more to life than, well, life, and that there were others there to help me. I have to let my mom follow her own path, as painful and troublesome as it may be. Or not be. We’ll see what happens.

Have I mentioned I spent the first 16 years of my career working in the technology industry? I’m not sure how this is going to fit in with my newer path, but it does lend itself to some nice analogies/comparisons that not many people will understand.

I wonder all the time where this information comes from, but I have a few theories and they all seem to be modeled after things that are going on in the tech world. For example a friend of mine had a blind date with someone this weekend. When she asked me about him, I knew he had ADD. Sure enough, one of the first things he told her was that he struggled with ADHD.

I’ve mentioned before that sometimes I’m given validating information to help the other person “trust” in the information that comes after that, things that can’t necessarily be verified at that time. I have no real idea where the data comes from that pops in my head, but I do have a theory. And it’s based on the same principles that guide cloud computing. You know, when you save your documents to Google Docs, you’re saving it in the “cloud” or when you run an app that doesn’t have to be installed on your hard drive.

I believe that all everyone’s information is stored in a giant database of sorts. I think that some people have a key to accessing that database and can ask for information and receive it in a fairly straightforward fashion. I think that maybe it’s connected to all of our higher consciousness. Just like a WIFI card can connect your computer to the Starbucks network. Some people like me get a huge knock on the head and can suddenly do this. Other people have been able to do it since birth. And some people train for years to do it. But I think we’re accessing information that’s stored elsewhere, in that great spiritual “cloud” somewhere that’s completely out of our realm of understanding. I guess I’d better read more about the Akashic records. Maybe that’s what I’m really talking about here. But I find it interesting to see how the tech world is slowly getting closer to mimicking how things work on the other side. I think our guides find it interesting as well.

Of course I don’t know this for sure. I’m sure when I get over to the other side my guides will be laughing hysterically at my attempts to explain all this. For all I know they’re doubled over right now. But I have this real left brain/right brain competition going on in my head. And that means I need to try to explain things, whether by reading quantum physics books or by mulling it over in my head.

This friend of mine thinks I should start doing readings on a regular basis. This terrifies me but I know I need to do it. I’ll keep you posted!